MQ On YouTube? A dedicated longtime player known as DrePlaysGames on YouTube has started a series of MechQuest videos! Here's the link to his channel . (Disclosure - he's not just a random player, but actually someone I know in real life.)

Do you have MechQuest videos, or ideas for them that you've never gotten off the ground? Let's see what you've got! Email me the link to your video or channel, or you can also use Twitter to let me know. You've got a chance to get it shared on the Design Notes. No guarantee of course - if I get a zillion responses I'll end up having to pick some randomly to highlight. They don't have to be instructional - they can be amusing or exciting or surreal or whatever direction your artistic vision takes you. What they should be to qualify as something I might share is pretty simple - they should be clean - no hax, no swearing - and basically family-friendly.

Flavescent Friday Wishlists! Start making your wishlists because we'll have a forum post for your input shortly. What's Flavescent Friday, you ask? We put items into a special limited-time discount shop for you and also choose a few rare items to include (some of those are not discounted).

Please do not make suggestions for any of the following:

Anything that has been promised as perma-rare Arthurian Eagle/Pirate Raider Other AvP war rares Crystal Asteroid rares (especially Shadow Blight/Purge)

One of us from the MQ team will set up a forums thread for your wishlists within the next day or so. For those who don't use the forums, we'll have some kind of alternative.

Now I need to wrap everything up for tomorrow's Turkageddon release! Nearly everything is done - I just need to get the mecha battles set up and the rewards shops plugged in and a couple of elements of the "outro" squared away. And finish the town interface. So I'll talk with you again soon.

(Also for this week: Ash & Lyris are working on this year's Zorbo, and Clarion is creating an e-blade for his birthday, too.)

Turkageddon is a Monster Holiday!: So of course you need a new monster in your favorite mecha battle roleplaying game, and we've got one for you in MechQuest! You'll encounter someone new to battle and you'll find yourself a new enemy. Holiday shopping is insane at this time of year, but that's not the only place you'll run into trouble!

Sorry for the delay - I had it scheduled for release last Friday and as is fitting for the holiday you might say I bit off more than I could chew... Seriously, this wound up as a mission incorporating a lot of elements that just take time to put together. It's not throwing out a lot of Gremlins or being extra-buggy or anything. It's going quite smoothly. Simply time-consuming, is all. I put together assets that already existed so you won't see a lot of new art but you will get to enjoy an all-new story that's never been told quite this way before.

I'm really excited about it and we will have everything ready for you this Friday, December 5 (and better than it would have been last week, for certain). I added in a new e-blade and an extra new enemy to help make up for the delay.

Ash is setting up a big monster and adding in a challenge version so everyone should have a blast with the major fights.

Real-Life Stuff: I cooked an enormous bird with all the trimmings for nineteen people on Turkageddon (Thanksgiving). Most everyone on the MQ team is buried in exams, too, and so I didn't like to ask for a lot of help with this release. I do apologize for the delay. The Thanksgiving prep was pretty crazy. It was part of the inspiration for this quest. I really did buy our bird in a

...spoiler alert!

...well, kind of a spoiler... skip this portion if you don't want to know anything about the plot!

back alley (well, the parking lot behind a restaurant) and it really was free-range and all kinds of good things.

(I know the farmers who raised the bird so it's not as shady as it sounds!)

...

No more plot spoilers from here onward!

I need to give you more regular Design Notes, so let me know whether you want more of the Real-Life stuff, or more of the behind-the-scenes development, or more sneak peek screenshots or what you want to be reading here. You can let me know on Twitter using #MechQuest or drop us a comment on our forums.

Flavescent Friday Is Coming! We'll have a forums poll for what you want to see in the shops so get ready to give your input!

Clarion's Birthday Shop: Happy birthday to our newest creator of weapon art coming up on December 6. The birthday shop will open this weekend in Soluna City Main.

YouTube: Do you have a YouTube channel where you feature MechQuest videos? Shoot me an email with the link! Tomorrow's Design Notes will feature a link to the YouTube channel where you'll find one of your fellow players' original videos. Yours could be next!

I'm so thankful for all of you - thanks for your enthusiasm and for supporting MechQuest!

Cyber Someday! Who knows what day it is in these crazy times? Log in now to take advantage of Cyber Someday! All-new energy blades by Blade and Plasma Charge, plus a new back shoulder weapon courtesy of blues, Plasma Charge, and Vivi.

The Nova Gem blade, called the "Blue Light Special," works with the Ninja uniforms to unlock its magic attack. There actually used to be a REAL "Blue Light Special" back in the Darker Ages...

The Green Starflash blade and the Blue Light Special are both Blade's artwork. Plasma Charge did the Cyber Slasher and also spent some time teaching Blade (and me) how the special magic attack is set up for e-blades. It pulls a completely separate file for the magic attack animation and uses very specific coding to make it all work together. So it's more time-consuming than a standard blade (but less complicated than a mecha weapon) - now that more of us have some familiarity with the inner workings, we'd like to start bringing you new magic attacks.

You're probably interested in the new shoulder specials. These are set up with Star Captain damage-per-turn (DPT) numbers, and if you are a Star Captain you unlock bonus specials. Specials designed by blues and coded by Vivi, so let's hear from blues:

The Junk: 89.7 GJNK is now on the air at last! See Parma John to get a little bit of further reveal. There's still more to the story coming - and ACW0 (who you may know from the forums, twitter, or in AQWorlds) has been writing cutscene script with us, so you have a lot more to look forward to! Did you know that this story idea initially came from Blade, who has also worked up a soon-to-be-seen NPC along with some... modified NPCs...

Yeah, the team is having fun with this! I know it's taking longer than I feel like it really should, but we will probably pick up more speed as our momentum gets underway & we hit a new stride.

behind-the-scenes: Getting the radio to work... it works just fine as a Starship Item, but getting it to work as a clickable radio in a town or quest file was super-problematic. Either it became unclickable, or resulted in an endless 0% loading, and even the mostly-workable solution using the standard music loading procedure still breaks the on-off toggle switch. It must just be inherently Evil somehow!

Also I just realized that after spending many, many hours fixing the replay of Turkageddons past, I did not set them up as playable for you. Better late than never, so that'll come later with more of the Winter Holiday stuff! Mogloween will leave next week, and Tek's Birthday Party will also end for the year. We've still got Flavescent Friday coming soon as well!

Oh! before I forget: Galanoth reminded me to mention this:

Holiday Special - Ends January 5, 2014: Get 10% more Artix Points when you purchase using credit cards or Paypal on portal.battleon.com

It's November! Such a busy time getting ready to bring you all sorts of holiday and non-holiday-but-long-promised goodness! I haven't had much time to write to you lately, and for now mainly I've got news for you from Plasma Charge and Practel. Plasma Charge has been doing some art & animation, and Practel is starting to learn about coding. Arklen, blues, Korin, minar, Vivi, and I have all been working quietly and busily on upcoming stuff as well. Anyhow, here's the news for the day! The actual Star Date on this first one is November 16, 3011

Incoming Transmission…A message to all mecha pilots, long time no see. I hope you’ve all had an excellent Mogloween. New items!Head to HAL’s hair shop to check out another two new hairstyles, one for the guys and one for the girls! Bug Fixes!The Tyrano mecha series has had a fix made so it can walk around areas like Romero!The Romero sword fight Gremlin has finally been squished! Gameplay Updates!The Cure Sys-Zero quest now has lower rolls to help new players progress. Also, Mae fixed some typos.You’ll also have a better chance to find one of the parts in Warlic’s Find Starship Parts quest.If you can think of other quests with tedious rolls please let us know here on the forums!

Thanks, Plasma Charge! And now, here's Practel:

Howdy!

It's been a while since my last Design Notes! Don't worry, I'm still here and working on more than ever! This Wednesday the Mogloween event and maps will be going away once again for another year, however there will be the release of previous years Turkageddon! I've been working on a new Thanksgiving/Fall Soluna City, and here's a small sneak peek below!

Finally, good luck to all of you Heros who are finishing up school before Thanksgiving break! It seems like this is the time where teachers just want to slam you with tests and quizes, and believe me, that's not fun.

Stay safe and have a wonderful Thanksgiving,

Practel

Thanks, Practel! Happy Turkageddon, everyone! I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all of you American players a happy Thanksgiving as well. We are planning Flavescent Friday for November 30th this year. A special weapon coming to the holiday shop tomorrow will give you a hint as to one of the mecha models that will be in the FF shop. What do you hope to see in the Flavescent Friday shop? Please let us know here!

Vivi fixed the issue where the Perfect Ghost Trap was imperfect - the problem was actually in the ghost monster Tech Phantom 1 - now your Perfect Ghost Traps should never fail to capture all Ghosts!

Vivi showed me how to fix the problem with the persistent battle menu that was happening if you missed the '09 Mega Turk // house item Attack Turkey - so those should now be working well.

I have made progress on the male "Punky" costume with the neck coloring issues, but I haven't been able to make it exactly right yet. It's probably one little simple thing and if I can't figure that out over the weekend I'll probably send it to Korin.

Speaking of Korin - he'll be along shortly to add some things to the Design Notes!